Small and Savage

Once again, I'm posting this one both here and on the Rock Bottom Ranch blog. Same entry, two addresses.

Among the egg-laying hens, there lives a one-pound rooster with 100 pounds of testosterone. He has become known as Napoleon, for want of a better name. Rarely does five minutes pass without the little bantam unleashing his high and squawking crow. The full-size chickens, turkeys, and peacock are like giants next to him. Nonetheless, Napoleon walks with the pride of a king. And the audacity of a wolverine; he has no fear of larger opponents. With spurred feet blazing, he challenged a freedom ranger—but was pecked into retreat. With a piercing stare in his eyes and flailing rage in his wings, he leaps at humans—but cannot touch the wearer of boots, for his striking range barely reaches above the ankle. I have used my oversize feet to guard youngsters from his attack. He will retreat from me; even Napoleon gives pause for my size. If Napoleon were the size of an ordinary rooster, he would be the terror of the ranch. At present, he is too small and awkward. There is more entertainment than danger in his aggression. Even so, we are wise to give him space. He is content to crow to the air, and assert himself to the world. And in the small world of a chicken yard, Napoleon is ruler. Until he is bested by a larger bird … but after a short retreat, he’ll declare himself king again!

(Napoleon is also known as Stewart.)

Freedom Rangers in the Land of Dragons

Rock Bottom Ranch now has an official blog! My colleague Melanie launched the effort and wrote the first entry. Hannah wrote the second, and I came in for the third--many voices and many pictures of animals already, less than a week after the blog was born.

My entry "Freedom Rangers in the Land of Dragons" currently adorns the homepage. At the risk of being slightly redundant, I also will copy and paste the entry here. ... It seems a logical next event, in my series of posts about ranch adventures. So yes, it is precisely the same entry as seen on the other blog--you can chose whether you prefer to read it here or there.

Freedom Rangers in the Land of Dragons

Rock Bottom Ranch is featured in the fall issue of Edible Aspen Magazine! The article (composed by RBR educator and ranch hand extraordinaire Hannah Lippe) features the FREEDOM RANGERS. No, they are not the stars of an action TV series. They are a breed of free-ranging chickens whom we have been raising for meat (with the ancillary benefit of soil-fertilizer from their droppings.) In a bold cooperative endeavor with Jock Jacober of Crystal River Meats, Rock Bottom Ranch will raise a total of 1,000 meat chickens in 2011. (And we have all already raised and had processed over 500 of them.)

If you have visited the ranch since May, you probably recall the free-ranging chickens in the pasture, with their dome-shaped mobile pens (chicken tractors). An electric fence protects the chickens from bears, and their grain reserves from the ravenous jaws of Big Willy. As their name suggests, the freedom rangers spend their days roaming the pasture, pawing and pecking the earth in pursuit of bugs and worms and plants to eat. Considering their small size, I consider the birds to be remarkable eaters; they dive into grain at morning and evening feedings, and spend the rest of their days finding wild food. They break to drink water, rest, or enjoy a dust bath. Or they may interrupt their quest to fight another chicken.

Fights are a natural part of life for chickens. Roosters face off with other roosters for dominance, while hens tussle with other hens. They stand face-to-face, cluck, and fluff their feathers threateningly. If neither opponent backs down, they peck each other. Roosters kick with their spurs. Most fights ends when one combatant flees; serious injuries occur only rarely. And on the free range, there is ample space for the loser to escape.

Although they are natural explorers, chickens prefer to explore close to home. Once a chicken has found a safe zone (such as a chicken tractor), she will return night after night. Our egg-laying hens (at the other end of the ranch) rome with fence-gates open during the day, but don’t venture too far from their home coop. Perhaps chickens perceive the world similarly to early maritime explorers—beyond the edge of the map, there is mystery and danger. “Here there be dragons.”

Recently, we brought some of the freedom rangers beyond the edge of the map. And there were dragons there.

The survival rate of our meat birds has been so high that we had a surplus of freedom rangers from our last crop. More birds grew to market size than we had arranged to be slaughtered. And so, these extra birds inhabit the ranch now. (And you can take one home for $10!) On Friday, Amy recruited my assistance to move these birds in with the egg-laying hens. The plan: move them in the afternoon to a separate ‘room’ of the layer’s chicken coop. Let them stay overnight. In the morning, let them out to mingle with their new neighbors.

We placed the chickens in crates for transport across the ranch. They fluttered and squawked when we caught them by their legs, but calmed down quickly inside the crate. Boxed in with their fellow chickens, they took a crowded truck-ride across the ranch. Then we introduced them to their new home.

In the early morning, the opened the chickens door. In the late morning, I returned to check on them—only to find that the “freedom rangers” were still huddled in their room, and hadn’t dared to venture into the yard. Evidently, they needed some persuasion. I lifted some by the feet, and pushed them through the door; others I chased out.

Once on pasture, the freedom rangers again began to act out their namesake. But they stayed huddled together, safe from this foreign flock of chickens, who now shared the pasture. Inevitably, as both parties pursued food and water, the egg-layers and the freedom rangers started to intermingle. A bit of grain that I put on the ground encouraged this process. A few freedom rangers came to eat—uncomfortably beside the strange other chickens, who came in so many different colors.

And then, the dragons arrived. The six young turkeys who joined the ranch this year, also came to the grain to eat. With their larger size, long necks, and menacing beaks, they must have resembled dragons to our freedom rangers. And, like dragons, they did not take kindly to intruders on their territory. A turkey pecked at a freedom ranger, chased her, tried to jump upon her. The ranger ran off and escaped. And returned to peck at the grain. And the process repeated. The ranger escaped again, but could not resist the lure of grain….

The laying-hens pasture has become an avian jungle, with chickens of all breeds and ages, the young turkeys, the elder turkey King Louie, and Eve the peacock. The animals learn to coexist, by cooperation or mutual avoidance. I am sure that the freedom rangers will follow suit, and find their place in the “pecking order.” In the meantime, they must rely on their wits and speed, to survive in the land of dragons.

Epilogue: After composing this post, I revisited the birds, and found freedom rangers and turkeys sharing the pasture, at a safe distance from each other. Evidently, both have adapted to the new neighbors.

Kids love animals, so should we all

At Rock Bottom Ranch, my past two weeks have been very busy. I have guided day camps for kids, including specialty 'Map and Compass' and 'Barnyard Art' camps, as well as 'Goat Ropers' (our general farm & nature camp for ages 8-10.) I have worked feverishly to prepare lessons that carry themes and impart knowledge and skills. No matter how clever I think that my programs are, the kids are still primarily interested in visiting the animals and touching them. Evidently, my orienteering course or landscape painting session still cannot match the magic of petting a living, breathing goat. Or holding a chicken, petting its feathers and hearing it cluck.

This fascination with animals seems to be universal among children. Even in our high-tech age, kids willingly put down their smart phones when a live animal enters the scene. Beautiful mountains and landscapes can also capture kids attention—but not as much as animals. I have seen a group of four-year-olds turn their gaze away from Crater Lake to observe an ant.

For some reason, as people get older, their fixation with the beasts dissipates. Their favorite place for recreation changes from the zoo to the bar; animals are noted mainly for their utility value (which is, most often, their corpses as food).

In my days at The Homestead, I remember the thrill of bringing four chickens home, in a box in the back of the truck, after I obtained them from a local farmer. They huddled close together as I drove, while the box shielded them from (most of) the cold wind. We put them in the coop, and they continued to huddle. A few days later, we let them outside. They squawked and flapped and strutted and pecked and pawed the Earth. They were ALIVE! They laid tasty eggs. I was proud to have re-launched the chicken project, which had lapsed after raccoons and foxes ate the previous flock. And I was proud to be raising the birds in general, while 99% of the people at Denison University had only one sort of interaction with chickens: eating their flesh or eggs, which had been trucked in, mostly from factory farms. The Homestead and I were ahead of the curve, when it came to understanding and feeling the essential connections between soil, food, and people.

Adult humans of the 'mainstream' culture do maintain interest in at least some animals. Dogs and cats continue to win the hearts of their keepers, of all ages. Evidently, the spark of affinity for animals remains, somewhere in us all.

I hope that we can kindle that spark, in both the young and the older. We should give our fellow animals more heed. I only wish that we could impart but a fraction of the empathy that people feel for cats and dogs to pigs, chickens, cows, and other livestock.

We live in the age of factory farming—a mass abuse and torture of animals to exceed anything undertaken in previous generations. Farm animals have the right to feel the sun and wind on their backs and the earth beneath their feet, to experience the changing seasons and the delightful buffet that mother nature provides. All of this is denied them in the cages of factory farms. If you have not heard about the horrors of such farms, I advise viewing the short film "Meet your Meat" (narrated by Alec Baldwin). It is graphic, and painful to watch, but it is the responsibility of consumers to know the truth.

While factory farming remains the dominant mode of animal agriculture, interest in alternatives is on the rise. The local food movement is growing. In some places, graduates of The Homestead lead the way. In 2007, the intrepid Homestead alum Colin McCrate founded the Seattle Urban Farm Company, the first of its kind in the Emerald City. He recruited fellow Homesteader Brad Halm to become co-manager. They work to convert backyards and urban lots into secure and sustainable sources of food. Their efforts include egg-laying chickens, as well as variegated edible plants. And in the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado, Rock Bottom Ranch isn't the only place raising livestock. An increasing number of urbanites and suburbanites have expressed interest in learning how to farm in their backyards. And, I recently learned that a Basalt woman is determined to keep her flock of chickens—and will fight the town council to make it happen.

These are encouraging signs. The rewards of farming, and raising free-range livestock, are many. In the process of improving animal lives, we will improve our own.

The ranch gives wisdom

On a Ranch or Homestead, one learns something new every day. For the past week, I have been on agricultural duty at Rock Bottom Ranch, and have learned quite a bit. In a single Tuesday, I built a head-catch for the goat milking stand, had my first truly successful goat-milking session, assisted with the construction of a 'hoop house' green house, and discovered the most humane way to kill a chicken. On the same day, I did morning both morning and evening chores to feed, water, and shelter the many animals, and collect their food products. In the end, it was a workday almost as epic as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Delilah the goat now gives milk in spades—up to four to six quarts a day. Harvesting the white liquid, however, has been a challenge for me. Until recently, I had never retrieved milk fit for human consumption from the dear goat. Every time, she kicked or knocked over or defecated in the bucket. What little milk was salvaged went to the young pigs.

This week, such results would not do us well. We had two children's camps in session (for 4-6 and 6-7 year olds), and both planned to make goat cheese. The pressure was on to keep them supplied.

I needed to improve the milk setup and improve my skills. First, I built a head catch for Delilah, based loosely on a diagram I found online, adapted for our specific stand. Next, Caitlin gave me a milking lesson, advice on how to lead the dance with the reluctant mammal. I learned from Caitlin a number of tricks and techniques, to supplement those I had earlier learned from Hannah.

Prior to bringing Delilah, we shooed visiting cats away and closed the milkroom doors—to block Delilah's biggest distraction, the baying of her kids. We brought her onto the stand. With head catch in place, the goat's range of motion was restricted—and she seemed calmer. Goats have two udders and humans have two hands, but we need several skills. First there is the pinch-and-squeeze with the fingers, which I can do well enough to get by, although my left hand is somewhat clumsy. Then, there is accuracy at milk-squirt, as one must fill a bucket through a small hole in its lid. Most importantly, however, one must learn to take calm control of the milking—strategically pet and massage the goat, feed her grain, push her against the wall when she attempts to jump over the bucket, and generally keep her feeling calm and snuggly... but also let her know who is boss. A multi-pronged challenge, like a karate match. And, like in a spar, one is wise to stay relaxed and fluent, despite the mental urge to tense up. And both activities feature a contact that does not break. Once one takes hold of the goat's udders, one should not let go until the milking session is over—much like the eye contact which does not break between the battling karateka. Although milking is not a fight, it is similar in being a game of control.

Tuesday night, it was my turn again to milk the goat. This time, I applied my new knowledge, and gathered one and a half useable quarts, one small squirt at a time. By the end, my hands were tired, but I felt like a child who had just rode a bicycle without training wheels for the first time.

At my next milking, Saturday morning, I generated two and a half quarts—enough to feed both Delilah's babies, and keep a bit for breakfast. (We allowed the babies to nurse for their first several weeks, but have now switched to bottle feeding; it is more work but makes them become friendlier to people.) Athena and Apollo suck heartily at plastic teat.

Back to Tuesday: After assembling my head-catch, I returned to the back pasture, to work on the hoop house (greenhouse). Throughout the week, the hoop house, which came as a giant assemble-it-yourself kit, has been an area of focus for us all. The instructions are barely decipherable, and the design is outrageously complicated. Hence, it has been cause of great frustration for some members of our team. Nonetheless, I always find it thrilling to build a purposeful structure. We dug post holes, ripped large rocks from the ground as they barred our path (they don't call this place Rock Bottom Ranch for nothing), placed the metal upright posts, assembled the archway, and generally bolted together many pieces of metal (and used all manner of tricks and levers to force the pieces together, as they didn't fit so well on their own.) We sweated and grunted through it, on the ground and on high ladders, under a hot sun. Progress on the greenhouse has been much slower than hoped. Even so, at the end of each day, progress is made.

On Tuesday, after a short time on the greenhouse, Amy announced her departure to deal with two chickens. One was a young meat bird, which had been run over by the chicken tractor, and had a broken hip. The other was an egg-layer, who was caught eating eggs. With such cannibalism, the hen negated her purpose on the farm. The sentence for both was death, with Amy and I as judge, jury, and executioner.

I hate to kill animals. I have done it several times. It has always made me feel like I will vomit, and made me think 'who made me god, to have the right to take life?' Curious then, that I am now a practitioner of animal agriculture, where killing animals is all in a day's work (although it does not yet feel that way to me.)

Here at the ranch, we try to give our animals the best possible lives, and the swiftest deaths. I took the egg-laying hen. I examined the Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens (a valuable book which we used both at The Homestead and here.) It described the way to kill a chicken instantly: to dislocate its head from the neck. I remembered how we used this method at The Homestead, but encountered difficulties in executing the process by hand. Storey's next paragraph had a solution: use your feet, and a broom. I read it carefully. I took hold of the hen, placed its head under the broomstick, stood with one foot on each side, anchoring broom and head flat against the ground. I gave the bird's feet a swift, hard pull. I not only dislocated the neck, but pulled the head off completely. The bird went into death throes, and spattered blood all about. Surprised, I dropped the flailing bird. It did somersaults over the ground, as the postmortem electricity surged through it. Other chickens trotted over, and pecked at their sister's detached head. Evidently, they don't share our taboos on cannibalism.

Although it may sound gruesome, the method has its advantages. It is easy to execute, and kills the bird in an eye-blink. Another common way to slaughter a chicken is to put it in a killing-cone, and cut its jugular vein. I am less impressed by this technique, as the bird may suffer for several minutes, while it bleeds out.

The chicken is now in the crockpot. Delilah is out grazing on grass and flowers and aspen leaves. The other laying hens roam about the ranch, pawing the earth in search of worms and seeds. They enter their coop to lay eggs. Inside, I continue to find eggs that were pecked open. I patched a hole through which magpies had been entering, but the problem persists. Evidently, another egg-eating hen is on the loose. We shall keep watch.

The baby goats frolic about the yard. Athena has grown her own tiny udders. One day, she will join her mother among the milk-givers. She will present new challenges at the milk-stand. Every goat is different, and I still have so much to learn.

Hoop house photo by Caitlin Bourassa; everything else by yours truly.